France on Friday accused the Assad regime of doing nothing to reach a peace agreement after almost seven years of war and said it was “committing mass crimes” in the eastern Ghouta area where 400,000 people are besieged by regime forces. “The Assad regime never entered in any negotiation since the beginning of the civil war,” France’s Ambassador to the US Gerard Araud said on Twitter on Friday. “They don’t…

The United Nations called for the urgent evacuation of 500 patients besieged in the Damascus suburb of eastern Ghouta, while 400,000 civilians remain trapped under Assad regime’s bombardments. Farhan Haq, Deputy Spokesman for the UN Secretary-General, said that the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) continue to call for the urgent medical evacuation of some 500 people in besieged eastern Ghouta in Syria. “Eastern Ghouta remains under…

The UN children's agency has called for the immediate evacuation of scores of sick Syrian children from the besieged eastern Ghouta on the outskirts of Damascus. In a statement on Sunday, UNICEF said that five children in Eastern Ghouta have already died, while 137 others require immediate medical assistance. The children, aged seven months to 17 years, are unable to access medical help for conditions ranging from kidney failure and…

France’s ambassador to the United Nations, François Delattre, expressed doubts about claims by the Assad regime that it had surrendered all its stockpiles of chemical weapons. He expressed his country’s support for the formation of a new commission to investigate chemical attacks in Syria. Delattre said that the international community should bring the use of chemical weapons in Syria to the spotlight and insist on punishing those responsible for chemical…

An estimated 55,000 Syrian refugees who escaped the horrors of Syria's conflict are now languishing in the Rukban camp, abandoned in a no man's land in a desert area along the Syria-Jordan border, Human Rights Watch (HRW) said. In addition to denying Syrians the right to seek asylum, Jordan's border closure has impeded delivery of life-saving humanitarian aid and severely restricted humanitarian agencies' capacity to operate there, the watchdog group…